Well its finally here the update to Macromedia Director 8. Director 8.5 is finally here and its got several great new features that almost anyone who deals with multi-media creation in CD’s, Interactive Media Pages (Interactive WebPages), and much more.
With the latest edition you can create a wide range of strongly interactive 3D programs such as games, e-selling (e-commerce), eLearning (online education), and much more. This latest edition you can also create scalable 3D content, you can also import models, textures, and animation from the most popular 3D applications and services out there as of this date. Another nice feature is that the director now has enhanced integration which allows you to incorporate interactive 2D and 3D animation, RealVideo, streaming, Macromedia Flash 5, MP3, RealPlayer, Apple QuickTime, bitmaps, vectors, text and much more into your applications. You can also design multi-user chat rooms for up to 2,000 simultaneous users who can chat using the Shockwave Multi-user Server 3, with new server-side logic and UDP support.
Unfortunately for those of you who might be interested in getting this program most will not be able to run this latest upgrade, I almost coun;t run it, though the Minimum System Requirements are as follows they do not allow for a complete install or use of the program to the fullest of its programming.
Windows:
200 MHz Intel Pentium II processor – Windows 98, NT4, 2000 – 64 MB or more of application RAM
100 MB of available disk space
256-color monitor capable of 800 x 600 resolution
CD-ROM drive
Windows-compatible sound card
Macintosh
180 MHz PowerPC
MAC OS 8.1 or later
64 MB or more of application RAM
100 MB of available disk space
256-color monitor capable of 800 x 600 resolution
CD-ROM drive
In conclusion Director Shockwave Studio 8.5 is sure to be a must-have upgrade, especially if you’re a 3D designer who is going to be taking your content to the Web or your a multimedia designer who wishes to
take advantage of the latest tools that are out there.
Pro’s: A nice bonus of over 300 3D behaviors, and around 800 new 3D Lingo commands, how has RealVideo and RealAudio support and Flash 5 scripting.
Con’s: Pricing. This program is unfortunately out of the price range of most people, at a suggested price tag of 1,199 USD, over 1,500 CAD and in the UK £949.00 (ex. VAT) is the average asking price for each CD version you buy this as a new user, upgrading is cheaper. Also, a drawback is that you have to use third-party support for .W3D format.
(reviewed on a G3/4 500 MHz … with 386 RAM, 69 GB HD, 2 MB backside cache, running stand along 9.1)